Re: Tanween variants and Unicode

["Mete Kural" <metek at touchtonecorp dot com>]

Hello Nadim,

From: Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>
>So if you really boil it down there are two approaches here,
>
> a. With a modifier (of some kind)
> b. A codepoint for each character
>
>So why not do both - the 'b' option will give you standardized
>backwards compatibility as well as functionality on restricted
>or non-font based approaches while the 'a' option would result
>in a more preferred standardized approach that is font technology
>driven.

I mentioned that if the UTC would ever accept a codepoint for each tanween variant, they could be made cannonically equivalent to the modifier approach. So both approaches could simultaneously be in use. It's not my preference but if both were to be accepted by the UTC, that would be the case.

First of all, there is no one proposal on the table right now that takes care of all the missing characters not supported by Unicode. The primary person who is making the current proposal is Tom. I'm just helping support his case. The current proposal Tom is taking to the UTC includes just the new hamza codepoint and the tanween variants with modifier approach. There are still more things such as the small waw.. So there has to be multiple proposals anyways. If someone wants to do another proposal for seperate codepoints for tanween variants they can go ahead and do it. I know that Tom is not willing to do this himself. He does not think this is a proper way to handle this encoding matter. You can try to convince him if you want (his email is t dot milo at chello dot nl - he posted to this list with this email address as well). 

Additionally your font vs. non-font based approach comparison is confusing. Remember that Postscript fonts are fonts as well.

Regards,
Mete



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Mete Kural
Touchtone Corporation
714-755-2810
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